American Cinematographer - November 1999 - 18
compiled by David E. Williams
painstaking pilgrimage aboard a slowmoving riding lawnmower while towing
Straight Shooting
by John Gainsborough
a
In 1994, Alvin
Straight,
a
real-life
resident of Laurens, Iowa, heard that his
estranged brother had suffered a stroke.
Formerly the best of friends, the two had
quarreled acrimoniously and not spoken
for a decade. Straight, over 70, in poor
shape and recovering from a bad fall,
was
determined to reconcile with his
sibling, who lived
300 miles
away
in Mount Zion, Wisconsin. Unable to
drive
too
some
due to his poor
eyesight, and
proud to be driven, Straight made his
a car
makeshift trailer.
His
shoot the
The
successful
journey took several weeks and
was not
without incident.
This slice of Americana
caught
the imagination of producer/writer/
editor Mary Sweeney, who wrote a
screenplay based on Straights exploits
and presented it to her longtime
collaborator and partner, David Lynch.
The tale immediately appealed to the
always-off-the-beaten-path filmmaker,
who soon approached venerable
cinematographer Freddie Francis, BSC to
unique road picture, entitled
Straight Story.
The recipient of Academy Awards
for his work
and
on
Sons and Lovers (1960)
Glory (1989),
and
the
ASC
International Award in 1998 (see ACMar.
'98), Francis had first collaborated with
Lynch on The Elephant Man (1980), and
subsequently shot Lynch's ambitious scifi epic Dune [AC Dec. '84). The two men
have remained close friends
Francis received
a
ever
since.
call and the
script for The Straight Story from Lynch in
summer of 1998, just six weeks
before the start of principal photography.
Eager to work with Lynch again, Francis
didn't hesitate to accept the project, but
he did stipulate a maximum 10-hour
shooting day. A spry octogenarian,
Francis asserts, "I'm not doing 16- or 17hour days anymore, but even at 10 hours,
we still came in two or three days under
the
schedule
on
the six-week shoot. There
must be a moral there somewhere!"
Francis also
requested that his
longtime camera operator, Gordon
Hayman, be brought aboard the show.
Hayman had operated on the last three
days of Elephant Man, and has operated
for Francis on every one of his pictures
ever
since.
Over the
Alvin
Straight
(Richard
Farnsworth)
treks
across
the
Midwest in The
Straight Story,
an
unusual road
picture directed
by David Lynch
and
photographed
by Freddie
Francis, BSC.
(Actual 35mm
frames.)
16 November 1999
of his 60
year's
experience in the film industry
as both a cinematographer and director,
Francis has found that creating the right
course
worth of
mood in his
photography is vital. "While
talking to a director, it doesn't take me
very long to understand the mood he is
trying to get for his movie," the
points out. "If he is the sort
of person you want to work with, you can
cameraman
get into his mind. With David Lynch, I
the same wavelength after a few
was on
PVBuiose
American Cinematographer - November 1999
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 1999
American Cinematographer - November 1999 - 1
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